Performer Biography

Eleanor Lee

Eleanor Lee is a Cleveland-based cellist and cello teacher whose mission is to use the impact of classical music as a means of empowering individuals and strengthening communities. She is Acting Principal Cellist of the Ashland Symphony Orchestra and a substitute cellist with The Cleveland Orchestra. Lee currently teaches private lessons at the Cleveland School of the Arts and is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Cello Performance and Suzuki Pedagogy at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studies with Mark Kosower, principal cellist of The Cleveland Orchestra. She is also a substitute private teacher at the Aurora School of Music. Prior to joining the New York-based The Orchestra Now in 2015, Lee earned her Bachelor’s in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, where she studied with Alan Harris. Born and raised just south of Pittsburgh, Lee studied cello with Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra principal cellist Anne Martindale Williams and Laura Evans, section cellist in the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra.

Lee’s current passion projects include Songs of #MeToo, in which she and the project’s founder, Nora Willauer, set the free-verse stories of sexual assault survivors from the Cleveland area to song, and Ensemble 207, a cello ensemble that performs a wide variety of music in free community performances throughout Cleveland. Her hobbies include baking, singing, driving across the continental United States, and drinking wine.